In Rudolf Steiner’s Lecture given in St. Gallen, on November 15, 1917, and published by Mercury Press in the booklet Geographic Medicine, we find a long discussion of various matters, including a number of statements about illness and the Double. I will next quote a few …
“Anyone born physically in Europe cannot see America around him; and just as he receives what he is born into physically as his environment, through what he has built in his body.“ [page 31]
In the second lecture, given on November 16th we find a more detailed number of remarks …
“Therefore, the opportunity exists – a short time before we are born, not very long before we are born – for another spiritual being besides our soul to take possession of our body, of the subconscious part of our body. It is this way: a short time before we are born we are permeated by another being – in our terminology we would call it an Ahrimanic spirit-being. ….
…. – these beings have an extraordinary high intelligence and a significantly developed will, but no warmth of heart at all ….
…. we go through life, my dear friends, in such a way that we have our souls and a Double of this kind, who is much more clever, ….
…. who is very intelligent, but has a kind of Mephistrophelian intelligence, and a Ahrimanic intelligence, and also an Ahrimanic will ….
…. that is much more akin to the nature forces that our human will, which is controlled by the mind and the heart (Gemut)*. [page 9]
*{I was told some years ago that it was not possible to translate Gemut into English. Still, I have in the last couple of years found these words: “the heart’s mind”}
…. we carry electrical streams in us, but they are of a purely Ahrimanic nature.”
“There is only one thing in human life that they can absolutely not endure, and this is death. Therefore they must always leave this human body, in which they have established themselves, before the body succumbs to death” [page10]
“In the coming centuries it will have to come to man’s knowledge that he bears such as a double within him, ….
…. this Double of which I have spoken is nothing more nor less than the author of all physical illnesses which come forth spontaneously from within; and to know him fully is organic medicine.” [page 11]
“ …. is the originator all of organic illness. And a brother of his, who is not conditioned Ahrimanically but Luciferically, is the originator of all neurasthenic and neurotic illnesses …. “ [page 12]
“Our earth is not at all a being that which everywhere pours out the same thing on its inhabitants; but in the different regions of the earth, something entirely different is rayed out. ….
…. forces, among them magnetism and electricity ….
…. – that is they influence man in various ways according to geographical formation.” ….
…. “ .,,. one of the more important tasks of the future will be to foster what had been broken off: geographical medicine, medical geography.” [page 13]
{Note By Me: I lived with an anthroposophical medical doctor for about five years, and I asked her if they studied the Double, and she said they did not.}
“America was known to be that region where especially those magnetic forces arose which bring man in relation with the Double. ….
…. the clearest relations to the Double proceed from the region of the earth which comprises the American continent.” ….
…. Europe had to be protected for a long time from all the influences; and it would not have been protected if the European world had not been completely shut off from America in the centuries before the fifteenth.” [page 15]
“Therefore people must not be separated according to territory, but receive from one another what is good and great in each territory and can be produced only there.” [page 17]
“That region where the force streaming up from below has the most influence on the Double, ….
…. that is the region of the earth where most of the mountain ranges run from north to south …. “
“…. nothing is intended here as characteristic of a people. …. Emerson was a man of completely European education. …. they confront the Double with complete humanity. Or such people as Woodrow Wilson, who are but mere sheaths of the Double, through whom the Double works with special effectiveness, who are essentially embodiments of the geographic nature of America.” [End of page 18, or to beginning of page 19]
Valentin Tomberg, in his “Inner Development” lectures, describes there a threefold double complex, … an ahrimanic double, a luciferic double, and a “human” double. Later, in his Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XV, The Devil, elaborates this way: there is a tempter (luciferic), a prosecutor (ahrimanic), and “egregores”, which Steiner in “Man as Symphony of the Creative Word” described as “cancers” of the soul.
I call them parasites of the soul, who through repeated rite-like activity develop a degree of independence from the ego. Those who become alcoholics, speak of “demon rum”, and addicts call it “the monkey on my back”. The strongest addiction are those of the will, which possess those drawn to wealth and power.
In my own biography, by the time my physical, astral, and ethereal bodies were around forty-seven years of age, I had been drawn to such as marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin. No heroin, and cocaine though. In any event, at that time I had my last joint in 1987, and it was three decades before I took up medical marijuana in 2017, as an aid for terrible arthritis in both knees.
During that thirty year period I succeeded in achieving Steiner’s goal for those who follow his “path”, which is outlined in GA-2, “A Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe’s World Conception”, and GA-4, “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. The mark of that accomplishment occurred over the winter of 2009-2010, when I was graced with the meeting of the Lesser and Greater Guardians of the Threshold.
Around that time, a connection of Facebook had asked me what he had to do to become an initiate, and I had to tell him there is nothing he can do, given that it is the Will of Another that chooses that gift.
The Path of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity involves acts of self-observation (introspection), following the methods of natural science. It was during such inner activity that I gained a great deal of personal knowledge of the Double.
A help was the sharing with me by another, that Dennis Klocek had said that when confronting the Double, we ask It for Its name, a question It dare not answer for to do so would give us power over It.
It was after being “Initiated”, that I wrote this book: “The Mystery of Evil in the light of the Sermon on the Mount”. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/mysteryofevil.html That book was originally in straight text, and was changed when I started on medical marijuana, by the addition of art, and the embellishment of language. As a consequence the best un-stoned draft is the copy in my book store: https://www.lulu.com/shop/joel-wendt/the-mystery-of-evil-in-the-light-of-the-sermon-on-the-mount/paperback/product-20300515.html?page=1&pageSize=4
It is ninety-four pages, so I will not include the whole of it here, but I will next copy some of what I wrote there about the Double, although first some comments from what I had read in Steiner:
“The very deep and wise philosopher-seer, Rudolf Steiner, in his lectures collected under the title: “From Symptom to Reality in Modern History”, briefly discussed the Mystery of Evil in this metaphorical way – here I have paraphrased his thoughts:
“Imagine a train running on some tracks. The train – its engines and cars – has a point or purpose as it were. There is goodness inherent in its comings and goings. Human perception, being human, notices mostly the wearing out of the rails, caused by the travels of the train, and thinks of this wearing out as evil or sin.
“Consider for the moment that the “house” that can be built on rock or sand is our own inner organism – our own soul-spirit/being/essence-nature. We need to keep in mind while we do this just how complicated human beings are, especially inwardly. This is so regardless of modern brain sciences, which have basically assumed the mind (soul-spirit/being/essence-nature of the human being) is only a function of the material brain, and that there is no spirit at all. Deconstructing the erroneous thinking of science in that regard was one of the purposes of my: The Art of God – an actual theory of Everything [http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/artofgod.html,
“There is an ancient idea from the Cultural East concerning seven energy centers that are thought to be some of the dynamic aspects of the house of the soul – the inner core of the human organism. These tradition calls: Lotus Flowers or the Chakras: (the crown chakra; the eyebrow chakra; the throat chakra; the heart chakra; and solar plexus chakra; the reproductive chakra and the base – or the spine – chakra). While conventional materialistic science doesn’t like these ideas, that prejudice doesn’t make them untrue – just not observed.
“In Steiner’s metaphor above, these energy centers are the “trains” – the engines and the cars. If, for example, we didn’t have the desire/drive for procreation, no new human beings would be born. If we didn’t have hunger, we would starve and the physical body would die. If we don’t care about each other – via the “heart”, we suffer as well.
“What we observe is that the carnal body and as well our social communities (such as families) suffer when there is an excess of some kind related to these psychic (soulful) energy drivers in our existence. The carnal body and our social communities are the “rails” – we see the harm from the excesses and this we have learned over time to culturally call: evil or sin.”
Below I will include “Dragon Riders: the human being in maturity”, which discusses how in aging we make piece between our appetites,and our higher ambitions. In the meantime, here is a diagram from The Mystery of Evil:
Christ Jesus
Guardian Angel
~i~AM~
[sense world < soul (A/d) < I-am > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]
human double
(asuras)
the Divine Mother
… out of which I separate for emphasis, this sub-diagram:
~i~AM~
(A/d) < I-am > (L/d)
[human (d)]
This is not an accurate picture, so much as it is a thematic schematic of some structural relationships. It is therefore a very poorly drawn abstract of a whole set of maps, none of which describe the actual territory. The reason for “i-AM” is to emphasis that this word refers to our nature which is more clearly understood as a verb, not a noun. “i”ness is necessary, but secondary to what acts. what/which/who/why/whatever: Acts is ~!~ Primeval ~!~ Fire ~!~ . Look in a mirror.
Here, in this word/picture masque, I am going to tell you how to study the territory, based upon several decades of personal experience of such study.
Lets start with the terms: soul and spirit. We could also use the terms: consciousness and self-consciousness and be speaking of the same things. There is that-which-experiences (self-consciousness, or spirit ~!~!~!~!~) and the content of those experiences (the field of consciousness, or soul).
For example, you are presently reading some text upon a page. “You”, in this example, are a self-consciousness experiencer, and the content of your experience includes (but is not limited to) the booklet/tablet/whatever you hold in your hand. Other aspects of your field of consciousness includes what it feels like to sit in the chair in which your are sitting, any incidental sounds in the background (music, kids yelling) as well as incidental experiences in your visual field besides this booklet.
As you “read” you may be sub-vocalizing the words, and as well using your mind to seek the meaning of the text. The text itself is a code – lines of dark on white, while the meaning of the text is only created by your mind – a skill it acquired when you learned to read. Most of us don’t pay any attention at all to the concepts created by our self-consciousness when we read, … we just read and arrive at some understanding of the text. We then think (as in believe) we “know” what we believe the text to mean.
To a certain degree, part of what is happening as you read is that the <”attention”> of your mind (of your self-consciousness as it is married to your field of consciousness) is directed to a purpose (reading), from which purpose other experiences can enter your consciousness created by some kind of a “distraction” (a dog barks). Notice I joined together (married) self-consciousness and the field of consciousness, for that is what we experience – their natural unity.
We experience what we call mind as this union of self-consciousness and the field of consciousness. “I” know I am reading, as reading is my intention, and it is my “I” (self-consciousness) that is directing my attention to its objects.
Suppose my spouse calls from another room and wants my “attention” – wants to change the attention of my self-consciousness to include within my consciousness his/her needs and wants. I may for a moment not want to be disturbed in my reading, but an instant of reflection may lead me to recognizing that it is better (from my present in the moment point of view) if I give to my spouse the attention he/she wants.
That just described above is a brief version of the territory for which the diagrams above are maps. My self-consciousness I am naming the “I-am,” and the conscience-like moment of reflection (choosing to let my reading be disturbed to pay attention to my spouse) I am labeling the “~i~AM~”. These two appear (as a map) thus:
~i~AM~
(A/d) < I-am > (L/d)
[human (d)]
To borrow from other systems of thought, let us call these (together) the lower and the higher ego. I am relating the higher ego (~i~AM~) obviously to what we experience as conscience, and the lower ego (I-am) to what we general think of us our self-consciousness. Always keep in mind that the map is not the territory. And, That an alchemical wedding is sought, not mutually assured annihilation.
This is the dancing/fiery pagan core of our spirit, these two – this lower and higher ego courting among ? ……….. its many mini-me selves, Whitman’s multitudes … hard to love others if you don’t love yourself … and which are to be educated over the many incarnations of our human existence. During this education/learning process, the possibility exists for the lower ego and the higher ego to marry (unite), the details of which we will go into later.
Let us next look at this symbol set (map):
[sense world < soul (A/d) < I-am > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]
and this sub-set within the above:
soul (A/d) < I-am > (L/d) soul
The core of our human nature (our spirit or self-consciousness) sits within the soul (or field of consciousness).
We actually look out at two different worlds from this seat of the self-consciousness within the field of consciousness:
[sense world < ~~~~!experiencing!~~~~ > spiritual world]
This sense world we are mostly familiar with, as it governs our daily existence from the moment of waking to the moment of going back to sleep once more. In our culture we don’t recognize that our interior world is the entrance to the spiritual world, given the assumptions regarding the mind common to the dominate paradigm of materialistic science (all is matter, there is no spirit). For an alternative vision see:Cowboy Bebop – and the physics of thought as moral art.
Is the mind the brain? What? Do not be silly. Look, see, choose, think ~!~!~!~!~~!~!~!!!!~!!!!` always dancing …
[For those familiar with the last Harry Potter movie, there is a scene (which appears to take place in the world of the dead), where Harry has a conversation with his now deceased mentor Dumbledore. Harry wonders aloud whether he should believe what he seems to be experiencing, saying something like: this can’t be real as it is only happening in my mind. To which Dumbledore replies, essentially: What makes you think what happens in your mind is not real?]
The interior world (as against the exterior sense world) – the narrow gate (the entrance to the spiritual world) – is that world where we experience thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will. Others cannot see this aspect of our existence – it only appears inwardly to us, and we often swim in it the same way a fish swims in water – we are mostly unaware of it.
What a lie detector machine tries to capture by measuring certain very limited phenomena is only a vain ghost of the real nature of our interior experience. What someone who was once called a psychic, or now an intuitive, experiences is some of the surface (yet hidden) elements of this interior world. All of us have intuitive (spiritual) experiences. We just don’t live in a culture that knows what to do with these experiences, given the dominance of the paradigm that all is matter and there is no spirit.
Naturata naturans and natura natura roughy translate, respectively, as “nature naturing” and “nature natured.” yet, what do we/I/you/me/thou/thee contribute?
Yet the fact remains that it is from this interior (spiritual) life of the human being that there arises that which appears to be good and evil and then entered into our shared social world when patriarchal dominion over required the application of Sinfulness from the Pulpit, which is why it is so crucial to acquire real knowledge of the facts of this world of our interior life. Fear of ourselves has many undesirable consequences, as revealed in the News Daily.
We need to face this Shadow* or Double in a fully objective fashion. Steiner (Bornfield) describes the reason for this in Lucifer and Ahriman, at page 21: “…the very purpose of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through him in earthly existence.” [emphasis added]
[*While I recognize the use of the term the Shadow by those connected to the works of Jung, I am not using this term with the same meanings to which they adhere. I actually mean (in a metaphorical sense) something more akin to an actual shadow cast by a human being when with their density and solidity they stand between something and “the light”. We (our “I”) stands in between the “divine light” and the world of earthly existence, and casts a shadow into that world by our density or stubbornness – the solidity or “fallen nature” of the baser moral qualities of our “I-am”]
Still, ~!~!~!~!~!!!!! dancing, singing, playing, getting intoxicated is divine … we need not remain conquered by the staid, the boring, the scared to move, … Anarchy is Coming.
It all gets more complicated, as the above maps included these symbols:
(A/d) (L/d)
[human (d)]
We are not alone inside, in the quiet, …some folks are troubled there, mostly because western medicine does not realize the Mother is VERY REAL & well, there are Imps of the perverse, a boundary condition unnaturally across without training shaman becoming dangerousthank all the old gods&goddesses & the new:
music rules.
The letter d) is meant to refer to the double, and the structure above means to suggest that this double is in fact threefold in its nature. This structure/creation is not unknown to humanity, although for a time it had to be forgotten. Here are some references:
Here is how the double (shadow) is described in a Native American work: Waynaboozoo’s Spirit Father advised him: “You have a twin brother whom you have wondered about and whom you would seek. This I tell you: he is your other side in all things and in all ways. He is with you…do not seek him. Do not wish to know him, but understand him. You will walk in the path of peace…he would not. You are kind…he is not. You are humble…he is not. You are generous…he is not. You seek the good in things…he does not. You shall respect others…he will not. You will seek the goodness in others…he will not. You are the light…he is the darkness. Know that he is with you, understand him.” From the Mishomis Book The voice of the Ojibway by Edw. BentonBanai, 1979.]
And the story of the two wolves (my version): A young man was speaking with his grandfather, and was troubled by impulses he had inside him to be mean, in imitation of some of his friends. His grandfather taught him as follows: Inside you are two wolves. One hungers to do the good, to be kind and to be wise. The other hungers to do evil, to be selfish and make trouble for others. This you must understand. The young man then said: But, grandfather, what do I do, how do I become the good wolf instead of the bad one? To which his grandfather replied: It all depends on which wolf you feed.
Let me also quote from the Quoran: “Qul a’udhu birabbin nas. Malikin nas. Ilahin nas. Min sharril waswasil khannas. Alladhi yuwaswisu fi sudurinnas. Minal jinnati wannas”, or in English: “Say, I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind, the King of mankind, the God of mankind, from the mischief of the sneaking whisperer, who whispers in the hearts of mankind from among the jinn and mankind.”
Or from the Lord’s Prayer, traditional version: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And from The Unvarnished Gospels, translated by Andy Gaus, this same verse: Matthew 6:13 And do not put us to the test, but snatch us from the Evil One’s clutches, … … is then surrounded by this threefold double-complex, resulting in this symbol set:
~i~AM~
(A/d) < I-am > (L/d)
[human (d)]
Notice that the higher ego is free of the impediments attached to the lower ego. Further, via the conscience (the higher ego) the total organism of the self-consciousness and field of consciousness is connected via the Guardian Angel to the higher spiritual powers, thus:
Christ Jesus
Guardian Angel
~i~AM~
< I-am >
Because the human being is unlearned, and learning, it needs this threefold double-complex in order to pass through the experiences of life – that is we need both earthly help (the threefold-double complex) and heavenly help (the Guardian Angel as an intermediary to the higher power).
Next, let us consider the threefold double-complex by itself, as connected to the lower ego: (A/d) < -am > (L/d)
[human (d)]
Helpers, actually … guide us to karma, make sure we have the right brick-weights in our invisible packs of troubles a mistake is often a blessing, and illness most assuredly is …
Tradition gives certain names for these “creatures”, who lie nearest at hand to the I-am in the soul. Here we will use that which was worked out by Rudolf Steiner, then later further developed by Valentin Tomberg. Let me repeat – as a practitioner for decades of introspective science I have direct experience of these beings. They help with the falling down, the increase in gravitas, ??? what part of that is just us, forgetting how to dance and sing???
Steiner gave us these names: Ahriman for A, and Lucifer for L. Now these classes of non-material invisible to the physical senses spiritual beings are hierarchical – that is they have a pyramid like order, such that the actual Being Ahriman and the actual Being Lucifer* sit like corporate or king-like bosses at the top of the pyramid, which then via a structure like gloves within glove within gloves, or >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> brings down into the individual soul a tiny “creature” that can be called the individual ahrimanic or luciferic double, … depending upon what role it plays within the soul or field of consciousness.
[*Lucifer, according to some traditions, redeemed himself following Christ’s Crucifixion, and became then a member of the Paraclete – the community of spiritual beings whose totality we call: the Holy Spirit. Lucifer’s hierarchies remain at their previous tasks, however.]
A central aspect of the mystery of evil is the primal paradox … from the point of view of the “others”, now is already perfection, and the only ones learning on the job are those beings we call: human, whose nature it is to be displeased, with the whole gift of life, existence, feeling, thinking, dreaming, … magical thinking is needed, and actually works when&if rightly applied.
Now everything in the Creation is in the nature of Beings of Spirit, such that the shadow our I-am casts, because of its own unredeemed nature, results in the presence of a spiritual being. Its not a mere effect like the physical shadow we see when light does not pass through us, but as all is being, every aspect of reality that is not “I” is other beings – including the double. There actually are no “things” in the way we ordinarily think.
How many children are called names, like bad, or good, or worse and worse and worse. Wounds of soul … become splinters in the growing eye of character .… Born to Run …
Clog up your mental arteries with enough dead-wooden thoughts – the garden there in most of us could always use some attention – although in soul-dynamics it is often the soil that needs enlivening. What seems by culture to be base, may well have a misunderstood reality when observed empirically. Men and women masturbate, or engage in Onanism-whatevers. Seeds are many. Nature’s choice for insuring wide distributions of treasured substances. Powerful forces live there, yes, but please leave the meaning of the sacred to that which is clearly meant to be the creator of their own meaning, given that they are endowed with existence in this World of Woes. The Divine Mystery Made US for a reason, which I suspect is not at all as lame as we treat each other.
Aspects of the ahrimanic double the prosecutor, and aspects of the luciferic double the tempter. These are psychological (soul-lawful) functions. These are not the only functions of these beings within the soul.
Because we are in need of help in understanding the sense world, the ahrimanic double causes us to believe in absolute* facts (the sense world is not actually absolute, but its paradoxes require a subtlety of mind most of us do not yet possess), and the luciferic double causes us to believe in absolute* truth, which gives us all those obsessive and fundamentalist errors of thought.
*[For this language I am indebted to Catherine MacCoun’s remarkable: On Becoming an Alchemist.]
Think of it this way. We are incomplete (fallen), although this should not be understood as what some call ”original sin”). This incompleteness is kind of like a virginity – in our first lives (of many) we were both innocent and culpable. We made mistakes (being innocent – lacking knowledge and experience), and these had consequences which is symbolized in the Christian and Hebrew Bible by the end of the time in the Garden.
We fell, out of a time in which we lived originally among spiritual beings as ourselves a spiritual being, into materiality, where for many God is now dead (the new atheism). It is only in materiality that the “I” or spirit can transform itself by having something (the material in all its meanings) which resists our “I”. Only in the density of modern existence can the newly born self-consciousness (see the discussion of the Evolution of Consciousness in The Art of God – an actual theory of Everything), feel so existentially involved that the “I” makes out of itself something it can only become through its own forces. Our “I” becomes clay-like and capable of being remodeled through our own wills. Our transformation is fully within our selves to accomplish, according to our own understanding of who we freely choose to become.
And Now For A Change Of Space
“Dragon Riders, the Human Being in Maturity”
Images (picture missing) from Europe, of the relationship of Archangel Michael and the Dragon, frequently portray Michael as killing the Dragon. Or if we are more charitable, Michael has his foot on the Dragon and seems ready with spear or sword to kill the Dragon. Certainly Michael dominates the Dragon with a threat of violence.
What is the soul-spiritual background behind such an image? Is it representative of the truth? What is the meaning of the Dragon?
Certainly the image of the Dragon in European art is meant in most cases to be a representation of evil. Michael is good, the Dragon is evil. The image also seems intended to be rooted in something “Christian”. Is it Christian? Would Christ kill or dominate the Dragon? That does not appear to be the meaning of Rudolf Steiner’s statue: The Representative of Humanity.
Steiner tells us (in the lectures connected under the title: The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness) that there was a battle in heaven around 1879, and Michael threw the Dragon to earth, as well as various related hierarchies of invisible spiritual beings, who then united with various earth-bound spirits of the dead (unable to truly begin their work in the afterlife), and the two groups (dark hierarchies and troubled dead) are at work then in our civilization (implicitly causing all manner of trouble).
Perhaps this stream of thinking has its origin with St. Paul, who clearly thought of the human body as fallen, and a source of corruption. In the First Letter to the Thessalonians: “…this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour , not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God.”
Really? The heathens do not know God? Seems to be a very peculiar God of Love that would withhold Himself from anyone.
Remember please that Paul was not a disciple and that when the Roman Catholic Church created the present form of the New Testament, that Roman Church made Paul’s writings its center and credo. This was an act as much social/political as it was religious, for Paul began his career hunting and crucifying early Christians, and only after his conversion on the Road to Damascus does Paul “see the light”. Yet, is he not like a lot of “converted”, of whatever new system of thought: morally self-righteous and certain? Paul is not the only person to “see the light”, but the Roman Church put him front and center and most historians of Christianity see Paul as the founder of the religion. (1)
If we look carefully at modern forms of Christian religion, we often have a hard time seeing people who follow in the footsteps of the Christ of the Gospels. Like Paul they are frequently self-righteous and judgmental. (2)
Rudolf Steiner has suggested Christianity, as a religion, is still becoming – it is not yet all that it is meant to be. Someone, according to Steiner, will be a great teacher of the Christ Impulse in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. What is going on here, in modern life in the sense of this becoming, which if we follow after Goethe, may well involve a dying into a new becoming. What then is the Dragon, as a symbol of evil, in such a context?
Consider for the moment the organism of the soul represented by the concepts of the systems of energy centers we know as the lotus flowers or the chakras. We can find there three integrated systems bearing the signature of threefolding.
The overall threefolding is that there are three centers above the heart (crown, eyebrow and throat) and three centers below the heart (base, reproductive and solar plexus). Each of those is also a sub-threefolding, with eyebrow being the center element of crown and throat, while the reproductive is the center of the base chakra and the solar plexus. We can gain additional insight by noting Steiner’s observations of the upper pole of the human organism consisting of the nerve-sense system, the lower pole as consisting of the metabolic-limb system, and the middle mediating element between these two being an accomplishment of the rhythmic system – the breathing and the blood circulation.
Steiner further describes (and self observation of the soul confirms) that we are more conscious at the upper pole (thinking), hardly conscious at all at the lower pole (willing), and more or less dreaming in the middle or mediating aspect (feeling).
Is the image of the Dragon an instinctive representation of the lower pole, wherein lie the secrets of the will, while Michael is an instinctive representation of the upper pole in its relationship to the lower pole? Or as Paul seems to conceive it, that: … each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.
To this flow of concepts let us now add some sense of how the Dragon is represented in the cultural East, and the cultural West. Keeping in mind that Michael and the Dragon is a representation out of the cultural Center.
In China, for example, the Dragon is often a symbol of wealth and power – a very ancient symbol. This symbol is everywhere, and as Steiner reported: Lucifer incarnated in the East five thousand years ago.
[Images missing]
Buddhist images of the Dragon often have the Buddha, or the Goddess of Mercy (Isshinkai), standing upright on the Dragon. The work of the Sixth Buddha seems to be mostly free of Lucifer’s influence, coming as it does just six hundred years before Christ’s Incarnation. It is to be the Seventh (or Maitreya) Buddha who is the great teacher of the Christ Impulse in the Epoch of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul (again, according to Steiner).
The Michael/Dragon image seeks to tell us that there is (at first blush) a tendency to see there a battle taking shape, which is true in human biographies as well. But the European image is not yet fully on the Earth, there being too much of St. Paul’s confusion at play. Only in the Americas does the image of the Dragon begin to mature, and take its place as a symbolic representation of the true potential relationship between the upper pole of the human organism and the lower. [missing image of Aztec Pyramid]
In American (USA) fantasy and science fiction literature and films, the Dragon often is ridden or has a rider (see the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey). Of particular interest is the use of the Dragon in the Earthsea stories of the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. In her version/tales we talk to the Dragon and the Dragon talks back. There is neither domination, or standing upright upon, but communication leading to permission to ride.
America is a peculiar place, in a way, for it appears that Ahriman has incarnated here. This implies that a great battle is to take place in America, which might be linked to the Mystery of the Culmination, and the turn of the Century (20th to 21st) encounter between the Aristotelians and the Platonists.
Le Guin, a very wise woman, in her imaginative work in the Earthsea tales, sees the Dragon as the oldest Being, the most magical and connected to the creation as a participant. Women are natural Dragons in their deep nature in these stories – able to transmute back and forth from one form to another. The man may ride the Dragon, if given permission, but cannot become one. We might be tempted to doubt LeGuin’s imagination, but if we read her book The Dispossessed, we would find there an imaginative representation of the principle ideas of Steiner’s The Philosophy of Freedom, expressed in/an~!~fictional society where the struggle to realize this freedom was the basis of the whole social order.
Keep in mind that in Steiner [I no longer believe that is accurate] it is the Holy Mother, from the depths on the other side of the Inner Spheres of the Earth, who rules the dark, which if we understood that symbolism means that the lower chakras – the Dragon, wherein resides the secrets of the will, is the oldest power of all (power being different in nature from Love and Justice).
We are to have communication and communion with our lower instincts – our appetites, for they are already holy. And, it is the feminine side of the soul that knows the Way. We can find this already happening in the United States of America, in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is a community process, involving confession and dialogue. It is fully feminine in its social nature. In AA the raw element of the excessive temptations of the appetites are faced, accepted and mastered, through a feminine social process that begins with surrender: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. [By the way, the Twelve Steps never use the word “I”, only the word “We”]
The upper pole, where the “I” is most awake, needs (for our human maturation) to learn of the lower pole, where the “I” is mostly asleep. A relationship is encouraged, through direct experience. That Dragon – the lower chakra threefoldness – as we go into the future, is neither somewhat free and independent (the cultural East), or to be mastered through threat of death (the cultural Center), but rather to be understood and known through communication and community (the cultural West).
We do need one more nuance here, which is to consider what is the relationship between all this and the threefold double-complex. The Dragon is not the Double. The Dragon is a metaphor for the hidden secrets of the will – the lower three lotus flowers. The Double is a collective of spiritual companions, allowed to thrive in the soul, intimately near to the “I”, so as to aid in the appearance of karma, and support our still weak intelligence until we mature inwardly in ourselves. In conventional terms these are: the ahrimanic double (the prosecutor); the luciferic double (the tempter); and the human double (such as addictions etc., which Steiner called cancers of the soul).
This company of “creatures” are not our only companions in the soul. There is, as well, the guardian angel; the higher “I” in the form of the conscience; and the occasional appearance of the Holy Spirit, when we are open to inwardly listening for It. Three higher spiritual companions and three lower spiritual companions.
As the biography passes into its maturity, where (for example) karma begins to slide away after 63, and an unusual freedom comes with entering this the 10th seventh of years, where the lower and the higher elements begin to become fully balanced, although on occasion disharmonies remain. At age 70, this task of balance is mostly complete and now we enter into a certain degree of freedom from the need to strive at all. We naturally become again as little children.
The “I” in maturity becomes a Dragon-rider – able to manage the lower chakras according to the degree of spiritual self-consciousness won in life. This is the grace we often find in our elders – a kind of contentment with who they are, and an absence of any need to strive or war anymore against the world, or the untamed-self.
Sure, you will find mature political activists or perhaps even hit-men. But in those cases the individual was that Way before this more settled stage of maturation. They continue to be who they discovered that they are. Whether curmudgeon or nag. Artist or drunk. Saint or sinner.
[missing images of an older sad woman, and an older bearded man wearing a cowboy hat]
The “I” and the Dragon are now one. The rider unites with/into the horse. The horse surrenders to the rider. It is no wonder that Steiner told us of how beneficial to the Earth were our elders. How tragic then is our want and need to have to hide so many of them away, and overlook all the wisdom of life they won at such grave costs over so many years of strife. The present-day gap between the elders and the young may be one of the greatest tragedies of modern civilization.
Perhaps, when we can re-recognize our Dragon-riders, we will find something very important that no longer need be lost. Yet, elder or Dragon-rider, a rose by any other name is still a rose, and that simile is especially apt, because a Dragon-rider content with who they have become often has all kinds of the most lovely thorns. Dragons do breathe fire after all.
Joel A. Wendt, age 73 (written on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Easter Week, 2014.
Notes:
(1) “Saving the Catholic Religion from the Roman Church – through deepening our understanding of the Third Fatima Prophecy”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/SavingCatholicReligion.html
(2) “Barack Obama and the reality of the anti-Christ spirit – what might happen if you begin to insert reason into Christian discourse, on questions of public life”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/barackobama.html
(3) “Ahriman 2012”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Ahriman2012.html
(4) “The Potential Mission of the Anthroposophical Society in the Early Centuries of the Third Millennium: the understanding of this Potential Mission is intimately connected to first fully understanding: the Culmination”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Culmination.html
(5) “Sex, Porn and the Return of the Divine Feminine”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/sex,porn.html
(6) “The Spiritual Scientific Import of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/TwelveSteps.html
(7) “the Mystery of Evil – in the Light of the Sermon on the Mount”: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/mysteryofevil.html
Direct Experience
Posted byJoel Wendt
on Anthroposophy, the Double, and Depression
Anthroposophy, the Double, and Depression
Anthroposophy, the Double, and Depression
– certain remarks above will be included
this is a kind of summary –
Please keep in mind that I don’t use the word “Anthroposophy” to mean familiarity with the works of Rudolf Steiner. To me, Anthroposophy is personal awake cognition of our own experiences of soul and spirit. “Anthroposophy is a path of cognition from the spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the Universe”. First sentence, first leading thought. The key words here are “path”, “from”, and “to”.
No book I have read, from whatever authority, will help me work with my own Double. That work is mine, and if I watch myself (even talk inwardly to myself), I can become more intimate with my own soul, and its darker characteristics.
The threefold double complex is not the I. Early on in the Class Lessons, Steiner writes of three creatures. Tomberg, in his anthroposophical work (Inner Development), writes of there being a luciferic double, an ahrimanic double, and a human double. Later, in Meditations on the Tarot, Tomberg writes of the tempter, the prosecutor, and egregores.
From one point of view, these entities are with us all the time. They serve purposes … i.e have functions in the psychology of the human soul and spirit. If we study this in ourselves, we will notice how they help us unfold our karma. For example, we are repeatedly tempted to indulge in a certain pleasure, but through over use we get ill.
Illness is a vital “initiation“ process, and some anthroposophists recognize illness as a blessing.
In our present now/moment in the spiritual history of mankind, these creatures are essentially hyper-active. The plandemic made us not just face illness, but fear of illness, fear of death, and to a certain extent fear of the “other”, the contagious ones.
All three aspects of the threefold double complex are working in concert. Readers of Steiner will be aware of how often he wrote of Ahriman’s intentions, or Lucifer’s as well. Generally he characterized them as evil intentions.
I am fairly sure that Steiner did not expect the ‘60’s, where the Mother (Divine Providence – fortune) and the Son (Artist of Karma – fate), engineered a Dionysian (luciferic) Rite in order to balance out the excessive aspects of the age of Ahriman’s incarnation.
We do have to be careful in how we think about the macro aspects of modern earth existence, aka: the Big Picture. That is: She has the whole world in His Hands.
In fact, many people today see the world – in the macro sense – as all screwed up, never should have happened, and as an I, I am powerless to fix it. This is actually a crisis of Faith. That’s why Steiner in one place can point to all the awful potentials facing us in the coming millennia, and then in another context tell us to “trust the future”.
A lot of people today are depressed, perhaps even hopeless. Maybe they have an addiction, aided by the tempter, and can’t seem to overcome it. We’ve lost jobs, and relatives. Homelessness is growing. Between the egotism in most of the world’s leaders, and the greed of the social-egregore we call a corporation, there is much to worry about.
At the same time, the whole world’s fortune and fate was given a “time-out” for reflection, and we can see everywhere people changing the course of their lives. In a spiritual social science, we can learn that states of social chaos are necessary before new structure and order can be found. On a higher level we might choose to see what is happening as the dying And becoming of “Western” civilization.
While the luciferic elements can tempt us to extravagant reactions, the ahrimanic elements paralyses the will. This activity of the persecutor, aka: the nag, puts us in a loop of self doubt. This mood of soul can also get us lost in shame, and despair. All depression (in a psychological sense) is preparation for the meeting with the Lessor Guardian of the Threshold.
I speak here from many years of experience.
It helped me to encounter the idea of the “double”, perhaps a version of Jung’s “shadow”. We know the story of the two wolves, and the riddle of which do you feed. In the Koran, we read of: “the sneaking whisperer, from among the Djinn and Mankind”. Given a name we can look for the phenomena. Once we notice the phenomena, then we can work with it consciously. The original idea, I worked with pragmatically, was attributed to Dennis Klocek
Because depression is so vivid, as an experience, we are already becoming aware of the right “being’s” presence. Klocek was alleged to have suggested that we speak to this inner darkness, and ask it “what is your name”. Several times, inwardly. The “being” can’t give you its name, without also losing aspects of its own freedom.
This silencing of the voice of the own nag has placed our will in the right direction. To manage depression means we not only “see”/sense these folk, but also that we are now (inwardly) in a soul environment where we can do more.
One of my favorites, a couple of decades or so, was to next – after asking the question – imagine three creatures (somewhat looking like Tolkien’s character “Golem”) dancing together in a circle, weaving their magic. Then I imagined them being covered over by honey, and falling down drunk and silly. It is the willed-picture that helps the release, and which then begins the task of reasserting our own I over the effects of these apparitions.
Most of the time, we discover our depression/state, has us sitting still, or lying down. The soul phenomena is the paralysis of the will.
Once we seize the inner territory, the next challenge is to stand up, and will the body into movement. Dance. Clean the house. Screaming these days has become popular.
Lately, when such moods ensnare me, I scream inside my mind. Easier on the throat. One of the activities of the nag is to use our unrealized higher ambitions as a goad to showing us our failures. I find that what works best is to inwardly scream at everyone, to feel and admit to our rage … which includes every other human being on the planet, all the higher beings of the Mystery, and anyone else. Being angry at God is normal. People who care about each other can get angry – you don’t think your guardian angel is happy when you follow the tempter, rather than the insights of the conscience?
The Spirit can handle angry. Indifference – i.e. not caring – that doesn’t work too well. What matters is the inner connection. Which in all its details is personal and private. Pray in secret He said.
There is also higher power available to manage the tasks. The luciferic tempter is balanced out by the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The ahrimanic prosecutor is balanced out by the intuitions of the Guardian Angel. The human double, with its egregorial community (bad habits, which I also call: wounds of soul), is balanced out by the higher ego, aka: the conscience.
Ask, seek, and knock, He said. Connection. Inner dialogue via the own personal gate to the mystery,
One final word on the “creatures”, all six of them (tempter, prosecutor, self generated parasites, Holy Spirit, Guardian Angel, and own conscience (higher ego).
Loving the latter three is easy. Loving the former three not so much. Resist the former, sure. Forgiving them helps. A prayer of gratitude for the whole … essential for our own sanity.
Posted byJoel Wendt
on the mystery of the social world of humanity
the mystery of the social world of humanity
The Mystery of the Social World of Humanity
Years ago I wrote a book: “The Art of God – an actual theory of Everything” In it I took religions ideas, cast them into theories, and set those theories against the ideas of the Big Bang and Neo-Darwinian Evolution, … as a better explanation of the meaning of human existence on the Earth.
The central truth discovered, via a phenomenological examination of the social and political life of humanity, was that the object of Cosmic Love was the individual biography – the rest of what worries us, wars, disease, and which religion or science was the most true, was basically background noise to the core meaning of human biographical existence. The following material is a joining together of three essays, where I worked out the details of the above observation.
Event and Aftermath – the Creation of Love through Crisis
An individual life is an ongoing puzzle. The surrounding world is an ongoing meta-puzzle, in which we are a “piece”, in a world that is not only not flat, but has an infinite invisible interior to which we are directly connected.
Aspects of this complex reality sometimes require a nebulous word, which hints yet fails: the Mystery. All the same, our time is our time … and, what are we going to do with it?
If we are to appreciate the current “Plague”, it is essential to pay attention to the phenomena. For example, the first major psychological (soul-lawful) effect was to amp up our fear of death. The second was the lock-down. Again a psychological trial, lonesomeness, or maybe – or maybe not – worse, forced to live with someone not harmonious – imagine two cholerics, or two melancholics, …
Our ideas of the future turn sour. Hopeless perhaps. A job is lost. We wear masks, fear touch, wait in long long long lines for tests and medicine.
And people are dying everywhere. Medical and educational resources are stretched beyond capacity. Meanwhile, in America some of the young (twenties), still party to the dismay of epidemiologists. Another black man is murdered by the police. Bottled up from fears of the Plague, people go to the streets anyway.
The level of crucial choices increase exponentially. Not just about how and when to follow the rules, but what do you do with the empty time. The momentum of our lives grinds to a near stop. This loss of order (go to work, eat, play, raise kids etc.), unites with our inertia … our habits, our unquestioned assumptions.
The riddle of the meaning of life comes to the fore. We have, prior to the Plague, been too much force of habit … this often without much thought. We have been flirting with darkness, and inattentive to our own shade.
If one were to examine the lore of various deep spiritual paths, looking for common trials and practices, these Plague events in our individual biography mirror such a Rite – although individualized.
Consider what happened to the elderly. Most deaths were old people. Many lived in minimal circumstances. They were seriously ill with cancers and heart disease, and perhaps suffering some dementia (mind gone walk-about – anchoring the true spirit to the matter). Fever dreams bring us nearer the threshold of death, and while materialistic science sez otherwise, they are met there with the Love of the Holy Mother.
If they are self-aware enough to choose, choice is offered. If not, mercy prevails.
Several years ago I had a conversation with Her, about what did They do in response to all our horrible deeds, where certainly They must feel the confusion of both victim and perpetrator. She said: “We turn it into love”.
Eventually I came to see the How of This, as Event and Aftermath. She, who has the whole world in His Hands, through us – we are part of We, who turn matters into love that heals the effects of dire circumstances of crisis, whether through war, or other Acts of Nature.
We are part of that Nature. At the same time, the loss of the ancient knowing that all of Nature had an interior self-aware sentient consciousness, just as do we, means we are too often blind to the sacrifices of All Our Relations.
As a consequence we look upon the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, plague, death, famine, and conquest, as also empty of spiritual inwardness. When earthquakes wreak nuclear facilities, or floods displace millions, or everywhere people are migrating through artificial borders, we don’t see that there are Cosmic Beings, with us, creating art.
We know through Rogue Weather, and what is lamely called: Climate Change, that we can barely predict what’s next, much less succeed at controlling it. We have a religion we call natural science, that doesn’t see reality, by choice more or less. All is matter, and there is no room – in that land of Grand Theories – for spirit.
The Collective Imagination is not unaware of the riddle, and the ironies. A beautiful artistic vision of this process is captured in the last episode of “Stranger Things” – below there will be a view spoilers.
The setting is 80’s small town America. Our heroes are mostly adolescents. There is a boys club that likes to play “Dungeons and Dragons”. As the story evolves, it becomes full of the paranormal. The main character is a young girl named “Eleven”, which is the only name she knows, as it is tattooed on her arm. She is and has been being tortured by human beings – corporate and military – when they can get their hands on her. The goal is to force paranormal abilities to appear, which they can then control.
These young people soon find what they call “the Upside down”. They discover large burrows underground their town, filled with writhing dangerous roots. Through trickery, Eleven made a hole in our world, between our reality, and a secondary reality, which greatly effects the lives of everyone.
TV being what it is today, the show had to have truly gross monsters, occasionally copious amounts of blood, and it being the 80’s, Russians were one of the villains of choice.
After four seasons, we get a Final Episode. A few of the heroes fall and die. Other’s seem to win a battle, that takes place in the Upside-down, yet that “win” is followed by an earthquake that nearly destroys the town. Visually this is realized by the release, from the Upside-down, of fiery forces that make a kind of cross across the town, and thus we have our Event.
In this episode there is a short set of scenes where in the Aftermath, some people flee the area, and others stick around to pick up the pieces. One group of shots takes place in a School Gym, where people are everywhere helping others, … providing food, places to sleep, fresh clothes … helpers and those needed help.
All over our planet, individual people are in one or another state of crisis, and this Eucharist of Love – the giving and accepting of the care of others, is everywhere.
Yet, the tale does not end there. The surviving heroes, who have various unusual abilities. see the lurking presence of the Upside-down is still there, and the image in the film is of a huge darkness in the sky, reaching down and leaving chaos.
Our heroes all had a journey, individually and together. This included visits with an aspect of reality they had not known existed.
Among aboriginal and indigenous peoples there is known to be such an Underworld. It has many names, such as the Lost Cities, or Faerie. We go there when we sleep and dream. If the right teaching is given, the encounter with the Beings of these Realms (plague, conquest, famine, and death) can be done consciously, and They are then experienced in a more real way.
It may be helpful to consider that the prime social-political phenomena is the human biography. Every self-generating and evolving spark is born into matter, and then leaves it behind. We all have associations that raise us. Family, village, religion, school, war lords, and lovers.
Through the arts of Fate and Fortune (karma and divine providence), we are aided in our journey of trials and choices, … a school of hard knocks and shared pain. The Mystery is that each living human being is unique. Each is a microcosm surrounded by a Macrocosm. The heart’s mind finds in these adventures the need to create the true and the good, out of their own sense of matters. These crises are a co-orchestrated act of love, with the addition that each journey dances to its own music.
The World of the Mother is caring for over 8 Billion sparks, each needing individual attention, from the Cosmic Authors, who exist and act from the outside of space and time.
The flowering of all of the heart’s minds, all over the world, often requires terrifying experiences. For freedom to be real, all choices must be possible. I have been calling “human freedom” the Beast from the Abyss of the uncreated and yet to be formed.
The future is a set of nows that have not happened yet. Still, each primary locus of Love’s influence is the needs of single biographies.
Event and Aftermath: the Creation of Love through Crisis
What goes on in the individual soul during these Events?
A Song of the Entombment, … in the Key of Lent.
Whether we know this – or not – our biographies share common trials and experiences. In the wider cultures of the world there are different maps to the same territory. Here, I will use Christian Iconography, which is based on the Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ: 1) Washing the Feet; 2) the Scourging; 3) the Crowning with Thorns; 4) the Carrying of the Cross; 5) the Crucifixion; 6) the Entombment; and 7) the Resurrection.
These are discussed in detail, in Tomberg’s “Inner Development”(1), written while he was still working within the School of Spiritual Science, and the Anthroposophical Movement. Theses seven lectures were given in Rotterdam, on 15-22 August 1938.
1. The New Michael Community and its Significance for the Future. 2. Meditation – Its Being and its Effect. 3. Indian Yoga in Relation to the Christian-Rosicrucian Path. 4. Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. 5. The Two Guardians of the Threshold. 6. The Occult Trials. 7. Rudolf Steiner’s Life-Path as the Way of the Christian Initiate.
I have made some personal observations over the years, of these trial aspects of Christian Initiation: see “Cowboy Bebop and the Physics of Thought as Moral Art”(2). Self observation, coupled with the intuitions of artists, revealed that we all go through these trials, and within any given biography they do not have to happen in the above order, or only once. We can experience “a Crowning with Thorns“ in our personal lives, and then later a “Scourging”.
A Crowning with Thorns happens when intimates deny the value of our thoughts. Scourging is the judgmental stones that are thrown at us in words, by these same intimates. It is called Karma … this power. Intimates are not just family, but also bosses, co-workers, jailers, and lovers.
For a shared trial within this crisis of civilization, we have the Plague. To conceive the world as a school of hard knocks and shared pain, allows us to also notice many opportunities to “wash the feet” aka: “Event and Aftermath – the Creation of Love Through Crisis”.
This potential practice of Stage 1 is always present. A Sign of coming Resurrection – a dying and becoming of “Western” civilization – is the everywhere cross-cultural experience of Entombment – so much going on all over, not just in the whole world, but as regards our intimates – we become aware of just how powerless we are to “save” them, and sometimes ourselves as well.
Entombment and depression are neighbors in the soul. In each case the will is paralyzed. The former can be dealt with, in a way quite different from the latter. From this Plague Rite, we are in preparation for the 6th Epoch, engendering a soul capacity of waking up through pain. Not just ours, but other’s pain as well.
Yesterday I had a two hour phone call with my eldest daughter (age 56). We’ve had many such over the years. She lives now month to month, and needs serious and costly dental work. Her personal experience of the plague-illness was quite difficult, and she presently lives alone. The most I can do is lend an ear, hopefully seasoned with sage advice – yet still a limiting effect and sign of our own powerlessness (Entombment).
I know her voice, which these days does not so much despair, as revealing a courage and refusal to succumb. Today she is better at coping with life’s chaos, than when she spent 15 years teaching school in Los Angeles. She had dental back then, yet trying to educate children, in an environment that opposes creativity (lesson plans have to be approved and so forth), … it was eating her soul.
Today she teaches individual kids, whose families she met that had a child with special needs, none of which were being met by the “L.A. School District”.
All of us can tell such stories of family and friends. Meanwhile the News floods us with horror, yet if we think about it, 99.999% of the billions of humans on the planet, are not in war zones, or digging through rubble searching for signs of life.
The oddity of Entombment is that it is the Gate of Surrender. In recovery, the idea is: “Let go, let God”. Christ, the human being, also surrendered – at the ripe moment – to implacable circumstances.
Carrying the Cross happens when we act in life as a moral human being. The Crucifixion is when we are nailed to the demands of others, for the expression of our own heart’s mind.
The death of possibilities can be an experience of the soul, when we give up some aspects of self, in order to follow the Will of Fortune (Divine Providence) and Fate (the Artist of Karma). Yet, … it is curious is it not, that our prayer is “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”. St. Paul allegedly wrote or said: “Not I, but Christ in me”.
I don’t think he understood … what was his idea of Christ? Something we already are, or some Ideal by which we should measure ourselves, … and others? Paul was not a disciple – a fisher of men, but a zealot who just changed the object of his religious passions. Many are the folk who have had their own Damascus Event, … the Roman Catholic Church called them saints, and confined them to holy orders. Which suggests Paul was not all that unique.
When we accept (surrender to) the biographical reality of the Seven Stages, we will then see we all are already sons and daughters of Mystery. The hard to bare moods of the trials are often longer than we wish, for growth of this sort requires time. Yet, if we just step back a bit, and see the Whole as it is, – we might get the idea of John the Baptist, about the One coming after him, who will baptize us all in Fire and Holy Breath.
(2) http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/CowboyBebop.html
A Song of Entombment … in the Key of Lent
By what Mystery does the Individual learn to trust their own judgement?
The Mood of Easter, in the Light of Our Individual Logos Nature
Over the course of my adult life, I began to notice a remarkable inner phenomena.
As the Season of Easter came and went there arose a kind of dying and becoming in my soul. Aspects of my soul life seemed no longer necessary, and this death in the soul was – in the beginning – painful, perhaps even depressing. The basic mood of soul was a kind of dread.
Then around Good Friday, the dying passed, and by Sunday, and the Resurrection, new and hopeful aspects of soul emerged. Over time I learned to notice which aspects wanted to be let go, and this meant I could name them, and participate in their dying and becoming.
Over these few decades, I was simultaneously making an empirical study of “thinking, where I would write something like: “the logical (Logos Nature) of thought is …. “
One of the ways this appears is when we ponder or muse about life, and then make and experience connections. This own logos logic is felt, more than pictured. We might wonder whether or not other’s should or have to make the same connections. Not an easy moral riddle, given the demands of others to see the world the Way they see it.
In our life, we might muse on an experience we call: common sense. “It makes sense (meaning) to me”. That each of us might have different results, the inner felt experience remains the same and we are right to trust it.
In terms of human experience, each spirit-spark is the center of a universe. I am here, and out there is … what?
Over the biography we create an inner understanding of this “what?” We make personal inner art, … which is meaning. Emerson wrote of what he called (I paraphrase) “a ray of relation connecting our self, and all the objects of experience.“
If we look at the spiritual-meaning of human history, we soon find everywhere-when that our story once included the experience of connectiveness of all to all. Did this feeling disappear from how we conceive today, and were we led this way to a shared abyss – ruled by the religions of unnatural science and free market capitalism?
The science of the ancients knew the mystery directly. Modern life – the third shaking of the world, as known to those native peoples still connected – is a crisis of meaning. Are we the generated and nurtured love creation of the mystery, or a random accident in an uncaring cosmos?
To the Romantic poets a great loss. Us and Nature somehow disconnected. That is changing, one individual heart’s mind at a time … by conscious choice, we are traveling home, to become connected to the Garden once more.
For these decades I have become connected to the logos nature of the works of Rudolf Steiner. Among those works, and followed by his followers, is the idea of Evil and Good. He speaks of great powers, such as Lucifer, Ahriman, Sorat, and the Asuras, as capable of great Evil.
My logos nature asked: If these bad guys could win, should not it already be over – so what is going on given that they have not? After all, we are still here.
Clearly then there had to be power in the realm of mystery that ruled them – the alleged bad guys. The question was answered easily for me: the Holy Mother – Earth Mother.
I often share this idea these days, by writing of “She who has the whole world in His Hands”. I also write of the ancient’s great idea of the Macrocosm and the microcosm. As Above, so Below, and As Below, so Above … for the Miracle of the One.
The One has aspects. These are qualitative realities. One aspect is the act of fathering or generation. Its mirror is the act of mothering or nurturing. As these qualities never lose wholeness or connection, their union aspect is love. Not just the idea of love, but deeds of real caring.
One does not have to believe, for there to be experiences that are themselves knowing. We are blessed this way, regardless of our view of the world.
Each of us are created this way – generation and nurturing and loving are all potential. Still, we are a universe, living and bumping into other universes. The Trinity latent in the One, aka: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … these are within the reach of our wills, … we are essentially Them … as above so below.
Trust your common sense logos nature logical musings … nobody but you knows the complexity of your biographical story as well as you do … nobody.
{first draft) written while intoxicated with the Mother’s medicine that grows like a weed, and listening – via Alexa – to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra}.
The above is connected to two other discoveries. These are elaborated here: https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2022/12/26/event-and-aftermath-the-creation-of-love-through-crisis/ and here:https://thecollectiveimagination.com/2023/02/20/a-song-of-the-entombment-in-the-key-of-lent/
Last Words
Like most of us, I have antipathies and sympathies – matters I don’t like and matters I do like. I don’t like it that Steiner is dishonored by the habit of our religious-like belief, that his every word is the Truth.
I don’t like it that the Mystery of Technology people don’t let me join in their work. I don’t like it that they appear not to do science, given that each presenter has carved out an area of justified expertise, yet the journals show know evidence of the back and forth arguments typical of true science.
I don’t like politicians, or the lame reasons folks have to justify service to corporate mega cultures (the Multinational Apex Predator Corporation – that claims to be a “person”).
I don’t like Christian conservatives who insist they know what the moral is, and we damn well better follow their lead, especially on such fundamental problems as the subjugation of women.
Most of us can make our own lists.
The Mystery Riddle is that Love loves all of us billions. Each individual biography being a holy event. The escape comes from the practice of what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount: Judge Not, Pray in Secret, and above All, love each other.
From Steiner we get the idea of the Age of the Consciousness Soul. During this Epoch we are to learn to bring out of ourselves, the Good and the True. As a living social process, these Times then requires conflict, and the absence of help from either our Religion, or our Social Environment. We are on our own, to fail, or thrive.
If this was not the case, freedom would be a myth, and we would remain children in need of constant Parenting.
Yet … Rudolf Steiner lived, and laid the groundwork for Goethean Science, Anthroposophical Medicine, Waldorf Schools, Biodynamic Agriculture, and Camphill Communities, just for starters.
All the same, when the world meets those of us, who treat every word of Steiner’s as Truth, this world then senses a wrongness, and turns away. He warned, in fact, that if the Culmination did not happen rightly, the future was in grave danger of being the end of civilization.
I was present for this event, and friends with Harvey Bornfield, who was Steiner reincarnated as one of the Aristotelians. The Platonists were devotes of the Goddess Natura, and the Anthroposophical Society remains an empty promise, if it does not become more inclusive, particularly of the Mysteries of the Holy Mother – Earth Mother.
Right now the Society is a closed inbred system, where leaders pick the next leaders, and spend a lot of time saying nice things about each other. That defect can be overcome, by letting new spiritual insight enter, and by practicing the Reverse Cultus.
We need to not only study Steiner, but Tomberg, Bardon, Wendt, Clarke, and MacCoun. The first three are dead European initiates, each with their own community of followers; and, the next three are Americans, still living, and having given their devotion to the Divine Feminine, are well named: shamans, wizards, and magicians.
Clarke united Hebrew Kabbalah with Native America Cosmology. I united the Hermetic Science (magic) of the ancient Egyptians with Spiritual Science, and MacCoun united Christian and Tibetan Alchemy.
Amen
Fake Ancient Alien Theorist Foolishly Visits the Collective Imagination 